Rhetorical Analysis of Kennedy’s Inaugural Address Essay

Custom StudentMr.
TeacherENG
1001-04
26 December 2016

Rhetorical Analysis of Kennedy’s Inaugural Address

A successful speech is often combined lots of factors, especially the use of rhetorical. Throughout the various periods of the famous speeches in the United States, all of the speechmaker used a variety of rhetorical devices and made their speech greatly appreciated, which is the magic of rhetorical. Kennedy was the youngest person elected U.S. President .His presidency came to represent the America youthful idealism in the aftermath of World War II. And Kennedy’s address was considered as one of the most wonderful in American history. Let us analysis the use of rhetorical in Kennedy’s inaugural speech.

“We dare not tempt them with weakness. For only when our arms are sufficient beyond doubt can we be certain beyond doubt that they will be never employed”. In this sentence, “beyond doubt” used repetition to strengthen the semantic and made it more rhythm. It can make the speech more momentum and impress the audience. “Now the trumpet summons us again — not as a call to bear arms, though arms we need: not as a call to battle, though embattled we are; but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle…” This paragraph used the parallelism. We can see these sentences are very neat but not identical, well-balanced but not boring. When people reading this kind of sentence, we will feel its ups and drops by rhythmic. In the following sentence, Kennedy used metaphor. “…and to remember that, in the past, those who foolishly sought power by riding the back of the tiger ended up inside.”

Metaphor uses a parable to illustrate the truth; so that the audiences can vivid image the “tiger” means China. It will make the speech more fascinating. Above Kennedy’s speech, I made ​​a brief analysis of the use of rhetorical. We can see it is undoubtedly we can improve the persuasion while pay attention to the use of rhetoric as we do in keynote. Kennedy’s inaugural speech is a successful speech, has a high value of appreciation. At the same time, it provides a good example for speech learners to improve language skills. Try to use these magic to build a words’ castle.